Stories and happenings in the life of a flight attendant written after my book.
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All photos by Penguin Scott unless noted.

Friday, July 22, 2016

Adventures in Flight: Open with Caution

I was attacked on
board my flight from Houston! We were on approach to SFO and I was
performing my safety checks. I got to row 10 and there on the floor
in front of the two occupants of that row was a large guitar case. As
you may know, items must fit under the seat in front of you. This
guitar case took up the length of all 3 seats!

I was aghast! "Where
did that come from?" I asked. "Was it there for take off?"
They nodded yes. My flying partner must have missed it in the
darkness. Or, sometimes passengers try to hide things with blankets
or coats; they can be quite crafty.

Of course, I now had
to find space for a guitar case, and this was a plane without a
closet. Thank the gods the loads were light. I started opening
overhead bins, praying there was one with room enough for this
musical annoyance. Each bin I opened was full of bags, back backs,
paper sacks, purses, a CPAP machine.
Open...close...open...close...full, full, full! Then I got to the
overhead bin at row 20DEF.

I was running out of
time, so the search had sped up. I opened the bin and before I could
react, I was attacked! It came at me with great speed. It was close,
but missed me and clunked to the floor with a loud thud, most likely
heard by the homes we overflew several hundred feet below the
aircraft. It got everyone's attention in the plane.

It was a horn! It
was a horn that was about 3 feet in length. It was pointy on one end
and blunt on the other, so either end would have been painful. With
the light loads, no one was seated in the aisle seat underneath it.
The dark horn spiraled like the stars would encircle one's head who
might be unfortunate enough to have been clonked by it.

Yeah, one of these! *

What kind of horn
was this? Who carries a long, pointy, spiral horn? What the hell does
one do with an animal horn? What animal is out there cursing the fact
that someone took it (and most likely their life to boot!).

It belonged to the
man in 20F, who seemed a bit miffed that his precious horn had fallen
six feet. Um, you put the horn of death along the edge of the
overhead bin, in front of luggage instead of behind it, and you're
going to get mad at me for not knowing this? I don't think so. You
can take that bad attitude and shove it in a piece of fruit cake! I
was nearly maimed! And what are you...a witch doctor? Why is there an
ever-loving spiraled horn in the overhead bin flying through the air
at me? Why? Where am I, Africa?

I'm asked, “What's
the weirdest thing you've seen in an overhead bin?” Until now I may
have answered, a cooler of human organs (which gets the plane a
priority taxi for takeoff and landing!), funky hats, musical
instruments, decorative canes, fancy suit cases, or once, I did find
a flight attendant in the overhead bin, but that was staged. Now I
can answer with pride, “A death horn!”

I secured the
spiraled horn of death back in the overhead much better than it had
been to begin with and eventually found an empty bin for the large
guitar. The man placed it in and I started to make my way to my jump
seat at the rear of the plane, catching the eye of a deadheading
flight attendant. She smiled knowingly at me, fully aware of what
must be going on in my head at that time. Guitar cases and attack
horns. Just another day at Mother Airline.